


astronomical light

by spidye



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt/Comfort, Infinity Gauntlet, Irondad, Not A Fix-It, OK ITS BOTH A FIX IT AND NOT A FIX IT it's a sad fix it, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Peter Parker has PTSD, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Endgame, Sad with a Happy Ending, infinity gauntlet peter parker, spideyson, tony stark survives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-02-08 17:58:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18628360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spidye/pseuds/spidye
Summary: When Peter uses the gauntlet during the final battle against Thanos, it saves the team, but nearly costs him his life. The stones react with his body, making him a danger to his friends and to himself. He struggles to heal and carry on in the wake of Thanos, but as it turns out, the road to recovery is a team effort.





	1. glass

**Author's Note:**

> essentially this is a three part sad fix-it following the situation if peter had used the gauntlet instead of tony. richard siken's poem "visible world" helped inspire this along and i couldn't sit there and just let it fester in my head so here y'all go. hopefully chaps 2&3 will come soon, depending on school! my twitter is [@tarongerton](https://twitter.com/tarongerton) <3

_as if you were the small room closed in glass_   
_With every speck of dust illuminated._

* * *

**2023**

Peter shouldn’t have put it on.

The plan had been to take it to someone who could wear it, but Thanos was just as desperate to get the gauntlet. He’d snatched it from Thanos’ fingertips seconds before he had gotten it on, and when Thanos gave chase, Carol had brought him to a halt. Now Peter’s standing twenty feet away, clutching the thing to his chest and watching her wrestle him into submission with the help of Thor and Steve. 

Around him, the battle thunders on, filled with the clashing of metal, the bark of gunfire — the screams of humans and Outriders alike make Peter’s hair stand on end. To his right, Tony is still dragging himself to consciousness; his head lifts once, then drops back against the rubble where he’s propped up. The three Avengers on top of the Titan — Carol, burning bright and hauling his hand to the ground; Thor, alight with electricity, keeping him on his knees; and Steve, his arm around Thanos’ neck, using all the strength he has left to keep him down.

But Thanos is still moving. Like some immense, distant wave, he’s shifting up and forward, eyes on the gauntlet. It’s only so long before one of the three loses their grip, and the wave will break.

Thanos’ gaze locks with Peter’s, and Peter can _feel_ the malice rolling off him. The light in his eyes is predatorial and vicious, like the unsettling desperation of a creature willing to injure itself to get out of a trap. _I’m going to kill you,_ Peter hears Thanos saying, though he doesn’t speak aloud. _This time, for good. I’ll tear you apart._ His teeth are clenched, and he’s making a guttural, animalistic sound of struggle as he pulls up and forward, up, up, his left knee is off the ground now. Peter’s breath stops short in his throat. _It’s mine. I’ll destroy you for even touching what’s rightfully mine._

Peter backpedals. “Karen, can you open my comm to all, uh, friendly channels?”

“Comms are now open, Peter.”

“Guys,” Peter says, “Guys, I have the gauntlet and I’m with Carol, but he’s _right_ here and he’s not staying down!”

“Get the hell out of there,” Rhodey interrupts, voice patched with static. “Parker, you need to book it!”

Peter replies with a quick “yessir” and turns on his heel. On either side of him, rubble is piled up steeply, with spikes of rebar protruding at dangerous positions; in the middle of the two inclines, however, it dips down into softer dirt, free of concrete and metal. Peter makes for the mound of dirt, scrambling up it quickly, still hugging the gauntlet to his chest. “Getting— out,” he pants. “Where do I— take the thing?”

“As far from him as you can get.” Tony sounds groggy and strained, but it’s still him on the comm. He’s pulling himself to his knees.

“Mr. Stark!” Peter’s broad smile of relief can be heard through Tony’s earpiece. He turns, just for a second, at the top of the mound. “Oh, man, am I glad to hear you awake—”

He doesn’t get to finish. Past the mound Peter’s on top of is the seething mass of the battle, and with the battle comes gunfire. It used to overwhelm him, but Peter has honed the danger sense to second nature now; when he feels a chill roll down his spine, he snaps his head in the direction of the battle. He hears the cock of a gun, the strike of its hammer, the following explosion roll down the barrel. The bullet whistles through the air as if in slow motion; he imagines its trajectory and tips his body weight backwards. It sails past him, just barely missing his torso, and ricochets off one of the rods of rebar protruding from the concrete.

In the same moment, Steve recoils and cries out.

The bullet had struck him straight in the head. Blood spills freely from Steve’s left eye, pouring over the helmet’s eyepiece and bloodying his mouth and the chin strap. His grip on Thanos slackens, then slips completely; he staggers backwards and falls. Tony, just now on his feet, calls out “Cap!” but Steve doesn’t move. Tony repeats, more urgently, “ _Steve!_ ”

Struggling to compensate for the loss of Steve’s help, Carol’s feet dig into the dirt as Thanos pulls himself to standing. Thor narrowly dodges a backhanded swipe from Thanos, quickly attempting to readjust and wrestle his hand downwards. Tony had been going to Steve’s side, but when Thanos steps forward, Tony alters course to help keep him at bay, suit whining as it powers up to strike.

Peter nearly scrambles forward to help them contain him — last time Tony fought Thanos he was spitting blood in seconds — but Thanos’ gaze is still on him, steady and cold. Peter clutches the gauntlet closer to his chest. It’s about more than the team now. He’s the one who has to keep it out of Thanos’ grasp. He turns, scanning the battlefield, looking for a safe path. There isn’t one. Outriders clash with sorcerers, the Dora Milaje, and Avengers mercilessly; this is only interrupted every so often by the overhead warship’s bursts of shelling, causing fights to disperse as soldiers scatter for cover. What once was the Avengers compound is now festering with laserfire that rips through enemy and ally alike, thinning the ranks. But where holes are made, they’re filled moments later with new soldiers, new aliens.

 _Getting through that is gonna be suicide,_ Peter thinks, but immediately shakes it off.

“Okay,” Peter breathes to himself, straightening his posture. “Okay, you can do this.”

Carol barks out, “ _Go_ , Peter! Get it away from him!”

With no safe place to take the gauntlet, Peter bolts for the thick of the battle.

“Light him up,” Tony shouts, “light this bastard up!”

Thor lifts Stormbreaker over his head, and the clouds overhead swirl and flicker on his command. A thunderous roar and a flash of white; lightning cracks down on the Titan, arcing out and bouncing off the other three. Tony’s suit brightens and whines with the additional power, which he routes to the chest repulsor, and Carol’s glow intensifies as she plants her feet and blasts him. The onslaught swathes Thanos in a swirling vortex of blue, white, and orange, too bright to even see through. But they _hear_ him scream, like a warning, warped and pained and angry. So, so angry. _I’ll get out and I’ll kill you,_ the scream says. _I’ll rip your soul from you. I’ll destroy you._

Through the tempest of lightning, fire, and energy, Thanos forces his eyes open. It takes him a moment to locate that little red speck making its way across the terrain, toting a gauntlet under his arm. But he finds him after a moment, and Thanos focuses his energy on him, his hatred, his pain. Everything. _I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you._ It hangs across the battlefield like a silent command, and the Outriders fall still. Hundreds of eyeless heads swivel towards Peter, toothy maws hanging slack with the whispers of _his prey, his prey_ floating among their ranks, and suddenly, the battle is pointed inwards. Peter is forced to skid to a stop in the dead middle of the battlefield because they aren’t _distracted_ anymore and the path that he had been dodging and weaving along to get to Rhodey or Strange has tightened and closed. Peter can only hear the muffled pattering of gunfire on the fight up on the ridge and the _thud-thud-thudding_ of his own heart as they stare, moving in closer to him.

“Hey,” he tells the comm. “Hey, uh, I think I have a problem—”

“Hand the gauntlet off,” Shuri responds. “Quickly!”

“There’s nobody,” Peter says, backing up and scanning the battlefield. No Avengers in sight. His heart pushes up into his throat. “There’s nobody around me, Shuri, someone’s gotta take this thing!”

He isn’t scared for himself. He just knows he can’t get _it_ out of here, and that will mean losing. It means losing and saying sorry again, the dust again, the waiting and the hoping and the imagining if hadn’t been him who faded away. It means not being as good as May believes he is, as Tony wants him to be.

Mr. Stark, can I ask you something?   _Uh-huh. What’s up?_ You said you wanted me to be better than you.   _Sure did._ What— exactly… does that mean? How much better— how good am I supposed to be?   _Good enough to save our asses when we need you to, kid._

Thanos, body alight and armor trailing smoke, forces himself to step backwards heavily, moving himself out of the volley of blinding, searing-hot pain. With Thanos no longer in the way, Carol’s full strength blast slams into Thor, knocking him backwards and to the ground. His head smacks against a bit of concrete, and his body stills. Stormbreaker skitters away, coming to a halt near the rubble. Tony kills the reactor beam instantly, staggering away, and his vision pulses white in time with his heartbeat at the overextension of power. Carol rushes Thanos again, but he had already curled his fist and drawn back; as soon as she’s close enough, he lashes out with built momentum. There’s a sick-sounding _crack!_ as bone meets bone, and blood sprays as her head snaps to the side with the strike. She falls, body flattened against the dirt, head twisted towards Tony, eyes shut and blood gushing from her nose.

Thanos’ head swings back to Tony, and he regards him for a moment, imagining what expression he’s wearing beneath the helmet. The familiar sense of dread wells up in Tony’s gut as he remembers Titan, and his eyes flick between the downed bodies of Carol, Steve, and Thor. Behind him and over the mound of dirt, Tony can imagine Peter fighting for his life, clinging to the gauntlet. Thor is on his side, eyes shut. Blood has trickled from Steve’s head in rivulets, cutting through the dirt and mingling with Carol’s green-tinted blood.  _Get up,_ he wills them, _get the hell up, don’t let him do this to us again—_

“If you’ve learned anything at all, Stark,” Thanos interrupts,  “it’s that I’m reasonable. I believe in fair trades.”

Not believing his ears, Tony repeats, “ _Fair?_ ”

“Yes,” Thanos says. His brows lift. “You, in some way, saved my daughter’s life, though you also turned her against me.” His eyes, slowly, shift up into the battle. Peter is doing his best, fighting with one hand, hugging the gauntlet with the other; he’s overwhelmed, and Tony can make out the scratchy sound of him asking for someone to take the gauntlet, for someone to help him. The Titan smiles, just barely, watching him struggle as he speaks. “I’ll return the favor for yours. All you have to do is tell him to give it up.”

Tony’s throat squeezes shut. He vaguely remembers Natasha’s conversation with Loki in 2012; how Loki accused her of bargaining for one life when the collapse of her entire species was at stake. How ridiculous it seemed then, and how horrifying it feels now. “You’d kill a whole planet—” he snaps, then pauses. From the corner of his eye, Tony can see Carol slowly stirring; she's on her hands and knees, blinking hard and trying to regain consciousness.

Time. He needs to buy time.

He forces his tone to soften into something close to a plea. “—you’d promise to keep him alive?”

“I’ll keep him safe,” Thanos assures him. “And I’ll take away his grief. He wouldn’t know to mourn you. I would treat him as my own.”

Tony’s jaw sets at that, thinking of Nebula; her mutilated body, the torture she had briefly described, and the complete demoralization Thanos had subjected her to. To Thanos, treating someone as _his own_ is simply a free pass to manipulate and hurt a person until they obeyed to his liking. Anger writhes in Tony’s gut, and it tastes like vomit for him to say, “Okay,” and lift his hands, as if in surrender. “Okay. I’ll tell him, but you have to promise. I have to be able to believe you,” his eyes flick to Carol, who’s slowly getting to her feet, “and we have to _move fast_ , because he isn’t expecting it right now—”

Thanos doesn’t miss the subtle change in Tony’s voice. Realization slackens his face, and he turns just in time for Carol to hit him with everything she’s got. It drives him backwards and to his knees, where he struggles to brace himself against her on the ground. Just within reach is the broken plate of Steve’s shield, and Tony doesn’t see him reach for it, doesn’t see his fingers curl around the straps. When Thanos flings his arm out, desperate, the broken edge of the shield rips through Tony’s faceplate and sends him reeling backwards. Carol lets off her blast as Tony lurches into the line of fire, and through the inch-wide cut in Tony’s helmet, she can see his eyes, wide and terrified, as Thanos grips him by the throat and hauls him to the ground.

This is familiar. This is something he should not be surprised to feel. A knee in the chest, the reactor whining at the pressure. Vibranium against titanium, titanium should withstand a Titan, shouldn’t it, it’s in the name, but the shield is slamming down against his helmet and throat and shoulders and the nanotech can’t rebuild itself fast enough.

Across the ridge, in the throes of the battle, Peter has paused just long enough to catch a glimpse of Tony getting the life struck out of him with that shield for the second time.

Thanos stops pummeling Tony only when Carol lights him up again, using the shield to deflect her blast. But his other hand reaches down to apply pressure to the reactor; the metal of the suit gives, whining and screeching in protest. The reactor presses through the inside of the suit, against Tony’s chest, cutting into the skin and straining against bones that are too fragile since the surgery. Tony inhales, chokes, gags on the pain that might just be vomit and grips Thanos’ wrist, shoving at it weakly. For a moment, it’s Stane overtop of him. He almost calls out for Rhodey but Carol is right there, she’s trying, she’s doing her best. His vision blackens at the corners.

There are things to protect and things to be protected.

In this one, the father cradles his newborn son for the first and last time before handing him to a man with the same name but different eyes. The baby’s cries are soft, despite how hard it’s trying to use its tiny lungs. In the next, the man with the different eyes is now the uncle. Hugging his nephew and telling him he’s okay, it was just a nightmare, the sun’ll shine tomorrow. And in the one after that, the man in the armor says “proud of you, kid,” still calls him kid after all these years even though he isn’t a kid, he’s a hero now, an Avenger, he’s just like you, like he always wanted to be. Has his own armor and everything.

He is still something to be protected and all those people were things to protect. But two of those are gone. One is going right now.

This order makes no sense to Peter, who sees plenty of times he could be doing the protecting, if they let him. 24th Street. Siberia. Titan. And right now, in the rubble of upstate New York, the sky black with Thanos’ wrath and the ground red with blood. _Run or protect. Those are your choices._

“You’re alright,” Tony had told Peter, but his eyes had said, _Not him, don’t take him,_ and Peter now knows how that feels. He imagines his first visit to the compound, Tony praising him for a job well done, offering him the title of Avenger. He remembers the way the light looked. Warm and soft, streaming through the glass as if the glass wasn’t there. But the glass protects them. The glass is there. The glass will be there until it breaks. Peter is watching Thanos break the glass with half of a vibranium shield.

 _If this is it,_ Tony thinks, _then this is a shit way to go._ His head is lolled to the side, blood thick in the back of his throat. He can’t leave them before the battle is done. Steve might be dead. He has no idea what’s going on past Thanos, but he knows that Peter is still out there, he’s on the comms right now, Tony can hear it—

“Mr. Stark,” comes Peter’s voice through the comm, thin and shaking, “you’re alright.”

He slips his hand into the gauntlet.

It’s heavy. Too large for him, and its mechanisms are burnt, barely functioning. The plating shifts and whines as it struggles to morph down to the size of his hand, and he wonders if it’s even going to work.

And then the astronomical light, cutting through his body, turning the battlefield into a plane of vague white shapes for all of three heartbeats. It’s only when the light fades that Peter feels the pain ripping up his arm like a knife. Electricity, white-hot and unrelenting, curls along his arm as each of the six stones root their powers in his body.

All eyes are on him. Tony’s eyes are wide and wet and there’s a plea of _not again_ stuck between his teeth, he can’t quite get it out. Thanos is watching the spectacle, which seems more like a sacrifice, with something between contempt and fear; a _child_ will surely be killed by the stones.

Bright lines of power seep through the joints and fissures of his armor, which smokes and fuses together before it can deploy countermeasures. There are no countermeasures. Both his armor and his own body are trying and failing to mitigate the pain and reject the gauntlet. The pain hits his chest, and Peter hears himself cry out, a hurt, childlike noise, strangled in the back of his throat.

But he’s still standing.

“Surely,” Thanos breathes, frowning, willing Peter to fall, _hungry_ to watch the stones consume him and char the boy to ash.

His knees threaten to give, so Peter plants his feet, measures his ragged breathing. His arm sags with the weight of the gauntlet, his heart is in his throat, but the Outriders surrounding him have stalled out in fear. The bright lines have stopped at his shoulder and Peter can feel the power; in his chest, his arm, his clenched fist. He knows what happens next. He hasn’t seen it, but he can imagine how it’s going to feel. The stones are vested in him, deep beneath his skin, pulsing and fragmenting in his very soul. He’s shaking. His breathing hitches. Thanos can see the desperation glinting in Peter’s eyes, even with the two hundred feet that’s between them.

“No,” is all Thanos says, but the tremor in his voice gives way to his fear. Peter lifts the gauntlet and thinks of May. His city. His friends. His eyes rest on Tony for only a moment more, unable to see that his eyes are open, that he’s okay. And then his gaze turns back to Thanos, desperation now galvanized into determination, and he puts his fingers together.

Through the comms, Tony can hear Peter spit, under his breath: “Go to hell.”

He snaps his fingers.

 

* * *

 

Peter wakes up in a glass room.

When his eyes flutter open, he winces. The light overhead is harsh and fluorescent, making it impossible to tell what time it is. He briefly registers pain in his chest, though it’s dull and distant, as if he’s medicated.

“He— llo,” he tries, but it comes out as a dry rasp, barely audible. Peter grimaces and clears his throat before trying again, louder: “Hello?”

Silence. Peter shifts a little, grunting, and slowly pushes himself to sitting.

His right arm is completely bandaged.

That catches his attention before he can glance around the room. He stares at it, prods at it with two fingers, the white gauze from his shoulder down to his fingers, encasing it like a mitten, or like mummy wrappings. He decides firmly on mummy wrappings. The arm doesn’t want to bend, so he’s gentle with it as he swings his legs and mummy-arm off the bed, now blinking around at the room.

Glass on all sides. The room seems to be the central part of something — the room can be walked around on all sides, and there are similarly-lit hallways that Peter can’t see into that split off into several directions. The bed is medical. There’s a panel of Stark tech on the rightmost glass panel, displaying his heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen level. Behind him, a sitting chair, for visitors. Behind that, a long, rectangular island. Again, medical. A sink, latex gloves, radiation equipment—

Radiation equipment?

Peter frowns and pushes himself to his feet. He wavers and instinctively catches himself with his mummy-arm — he yelps sharply, covers his mouth and curls his body up, as if to lessen the nausea-inducing wave of pain. He stays like this for a moment, hunched with his knees to his chest, squatting by the foot of the bed with his injured arm resting on the mattress and his free hand clamped over his mouth.  

Footsteps approach at a jog, and Tony comes into view around the corner outside the glass, slowing to a stop at the sight of Peter crouched near the floor. He taps the glass to expand his vitals, and then, hesitantly: “Kid?”

At the sound of Tony’s voice, Peter’s head lifts, and he brightens instantly. “Mr. Stark,” Peter says, clambering to his feet. A thousand questions form on his tongue at once, jumbling together and coming out slurred and mixed up. “What are we— where are we, what— _happened?_ Where? Are you dead —no," he shakes his head and bats a hand, "is _he_ dead? Are you okay? Is everybody okay—”  

“Hey, easy,” Tony chides gently, “breathe. One question at a time— Peter, easy—”

Too excited to remember that his body is still a little dodgy, Peter has moved across the room quickly, weaving a little as he walks. He stops a foot from the glass, wavering on his toes in front of Tony.

“I remember almost everything up until the— until I used the gauntlet,” Peter says. He swallows roughly. “Did anything else happen? Did we—”  His voice softens, brows furrowing up with hope. “Did we win?”

Tony huffs a quiet laugh, unable to keep his lips from quirking upward. He’d missed the kid’s babbling enthusiasm, even now, when Peter is barely out of a comatose state. “Yeah,” he says, after a moment. “Yeah, we won. We got everyone back. He’s dead, and we’re okay.”

Peter’s face splits into a broad smile at that. “See? I told you we would, didn’t I?”

“Uh, no,” Tony says, tilting his head to the side and frowning playfully. “You never told me that. I would have remembered.”

It earns a giggle from Peter, who bounces on his toes. “I’m starving. Can I come out now?”

Tony’s expression falls, and his gaze drops to the floor. He says nothing.

Peter blinks into a frown, not understanding. “Mr. Stark?” he prompts, “...can I come out?”

No answer from Tony. How in the hell is he supposed to break this to the kid? It was supposed to be Banner. Or Steve, who would expertly deviate the conversation into some friendly debate about the better part of NYC. Hell, even Carol could do it better. Peter, now feeling anxiety pitting in his stomach, inhales unsteadily.

“Please tell me,” he says in a voice so quiet it almost sounds frail. “I— I know that face you’re doing, please tell me.”

“I can’t let you out.” Tony is staring at the gauze on Peter’s forearm, not meeting his gaze, not wanting to see the hurt and fear well up in the kid’s eyes.

Peter withers, breathing out, “...what?”

“Can’t,” Tony repeats, voice stronger, still strained. He sniffs, jams his hands in his pockets, doesn’t want Peter to see them shaking. “It’s— it was the, uh.” His chest is tight. “The stones. —You’re a walking energy core, kid. For now. We’re— we’ve been working on it. Nonstop. We’re gonna fix you up. Your aunt’s been by to see you a few times, she’ll stop in tonight after I give her a call to tell her you're awake. And that,” he gestures to his arm, “is going to heal, mostly.” He looks up, finally, and Peter is giving him that pleading look that sees right through his reassurances. Tony's carefully neutral expression wilts.

Peter’s throat is thick. “Mr. Stark,” is all he says, but Tony can read the rest: _please don’t leave me in here, please tell me what’s wrong, please let me come out._ Peter chokes a little, steps forward. “I’m—”

He can’t finish it, whatever he was going to say, because his chin has started to quiver. He thought after the dust he wouldn’t be scared anymore, that he’d be just as brave as Tony, but Tony is behind four inches of glass and Peter can feel his chest starting to tighten and tremble with fear.

 _I'll rip your soul from you,_ Thanos had threatened.

“Mr. Stark,” Peter pleads again, voice quiet and eyes welling with tears. His left hand settles on the glass, fingers splayed. And Tony just stares at him, heartbroken.  


	2. light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an unfortunately delayed update but here she is! it's twice the size of chapter 1 i am SO sorry i can't shut up sdkfjh. i addressed bruce with he/they pronouns rather than just he/him. my twitter got suspended so i'm at [@tarongerton](https://twitter.com/tarongerton) now. also this shit gonna have typos in it like nobody's business it's late and if i proofread this i'm gonna just want to delete the whole thing so TAKE IT 
> 
> the next update will likely come after i update string theory (which is my fave work and u should check her out if you liked this) but uh yea, here 
> 
> very general TW for suicidal thoughts

_You raised your hand to your face as if_  
_to hide it, the pink fingers gone gold as the light  
  streamed straight to the bone_

* * *

Peter had taken a week to wake up.

With the compound decimated, the team had headed to the tower in NYC after the battle was won. It was odd, really. Oddly reminiscent, landing a quinjet on the pad off the tip of the former Avengers tower after all these years. Incredibly, it was vacant; the company that had overtaken it after the Avengers left couldn’t survive half-staffed and had abandoned the building. Some hopeful citizen had hooked up the building’s giant A-light to an independent power supply, keeping the lights on indefinitely. It almost served as a call for help, begging the Avengers to come back, to do something. To save them.

The flight home was eerie, dead silent, and every team member felt like they were floating on the end of a too short tether. They had done it. They had won, recovered all those lost, and defeated Thanos with minimal casualties. The usual post-battle high made the team light on their feet in the first few minutes; all breathless smiles and claps on the shoulder, bloodied grins, even a congratulatory kiss or two.

But Peter’s body was laid out on the seats, covered in a blanket, his head by Tony’s thigh. It hurt to look at, and almost everyone kept their eyes averted, but it was impossible to keep from glancing to him every now and then. As the Quinjet had touched down, the muted blue light of the tower’s A had lit up the cockpit; it painted Peter’s thin frame in a corpse-like pallor and cast somber shadows across the team’s beaten, bloodied faces.

The first night was the worst. They had put Peter in the room after realizing his contamination. Everybody on the Quinjet had it to some degree, but Steve had come away the worst, with radiation burns and blisters on his hands from carrying the kid. He was throwing up for hours afterwards, barely stable enough to even have his injured eye bandaged and tended to. Tony, exhausted and injured himself, had refused to sleep that night; he spent hours bouncing between checking on Peter and Steve.

The rest of the Avengers had dispersed, seeking out the people they had left behind after the snap. Only Bruce, Carol, and Thor remained behind, though they stayed carefully out of sight. Rhodey helped Tony how he could, of course, and Pepper was already throwing herself into the incoming media storm.

Before the battle, part of Tony had hoped that, after they won, there would be a reunion, some kind of dinner to celebrate their triumph. Had Nat been present, she would have insisted on the same. But the losses were too heavy.

“Maybe after the kid wakes up,” Rhodey had said. Tony hadn’t even let on, but Rhodey, always one step ahead, had taken Tony’s hand and squeezed it. “Then we’ll celebrate, yeah?”

In that painfully long week, Peter laid still as death in the coffin of the glass room. The only sign he was still alive was the rise and fall of his chest and the vitals displayed on the outside of the glass. Only a few of them could go in; the inner shield of glass kept the deadly amount of radiation trapped inside. Peter was fine, of course. His body was adjusted to that. But the rest of them weren’t. Carol was alright to go in. Thor and Bruce, too, were immune. But with how sick Steve got, enhanced and all, from just touching his blood— it was too high of a risk to let anyone else in.

May visited daily. The first day she came, Tony had felt a pit of dread in his stomach. He had avoided her since Peter’s funeral five years ago, haunted by her reaction — it would have been easier if she had been angry. When she had walked through the tower’s front doors, Tony had expected the worst. She wouldn’t be wrong to hate him. She should blame him. He certainly blames himself.

But, standing in front of the panel of glass, staring in at Peter’s unmoving form, May had simply taken Tony’s hand in her own and murmured, “He’ll come back to us.”

As it turns out, Peter’s snap had done more than just destroy Thanos’ army.

The first sign had been Rhodey brushing his fingers through Tony’s hair and muttering, “You get this shit dyed?” Tony had glanced at himself in the reflection of the window. Sure enough, the grey in his hair was replaced by its normal brown. Likewise, Rhodey’s grey was gone, too, and his face seemed smoother, younger. They hadn’t thought much of it.

And then their clocks stopped working. That made Tony worry. He ran everything digitally, so a stopped clock isn’t sign of a system failure, but of some kind of larger problem. He made a note to look into the timestream as soon as he could. He brushed it off as some hiccup caused by Steve’s brief journey to return the stones.

The final confirmation is Morgan’s disappearance. Pepper had gone home to check in on her and take over for Happy, but when she’d shown up, Happy had been sitting alone on the couch with his head in his hands.

“I don’t know,” he had said, choked it. “I don’t know where she went. She was right here in my arms. She was asleep. She just faded away.”

Tony drops everything after that. Bruce, Carol, and Thor were more than capable of looking after Peter while he, Pepper, Happy, and Rhodey go on a frantic chase for his missing daughter. The authorities are alerted, every Avenger told to keep their eyes out. Clint suspects Thanos’s remnants or even Ronan of taking her. Nebula, who had taken Tony’s call within seconds of receiving it, agrees with Clint, says she’ll investigate. Even Steve, when he overhears Tony’s frantic volley of phonecalls about ‘finding her’ volunteers to help them look, but Tony’s heart stops in his chest when Steve says, “Daughter? I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

“You met her,” Tony replies, brows drawing together. “At the house. When you asked for my help, she was there.”

Steve just stares blankly at him, shaking his head slowly. The wad of white gauze covering his eye is a painful reminder of the injury he’d suffered in the battle, and it’s enough for Tony to step forward and reach up, gently cupping Steve’s jaw in his hand to inspect him. In a low and fearful voice: “You know who I am, Cap?”

“Of course I do, Tony,” Steve says, scowling and removing Tony’s hand as he pulls his head back. “I’m not losing my memory.” He hesitates for a moment, Tony’s wrist still resting in his palm, and then withdraws, letting his fingers skim the other man’s skin. He sighs. “Show me a picture so I know who to look for.” Tony obediently fishes out his wallet, looking for the picture.

It’s not there.

His brows knit, and he huffs a little in confusion. The tip of panic is pressing at his chest, but he tries to brush it off. The picture just fell out. It must have. He goes for his phone, instead— his camera roll is almost _completely_ Morgan. He has an album dedicated to her, with at least three thousand pictures. His hands are shaking when he pulls up the photo app, and when his thumb hovers over the _Morgan_ album, his throat closes up. There are no pictures in it.

Not a single photo.

Tony’s knee gives up from under him, and Steve has to catch Tony by the arm to keep him from going down. “Tony,” he says urgently. “What the hell—”

“Empty,” Tony chokes, chest tight with panic. “No pictures. Don’t have any pictures of her.”

“Okay,” Steve says, hooking his arm around Tony’s waist. The smaller man is now unbalanced, breathing ragged and quick. Steve has seen him like this once or twice before, knows just how to tuck Tony in his arms and against his chest to squeeze him tight and press the panic away. His voice is smooth, reassuring, carefully void of his own worry swelling in his gut. “It’s probably just a malfunction, Tony. It’s okay. Breathe. — _Breathe._ We’ll find her. Just tell me what she looks like.”

There’s a long, painful silence.

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

In a voice so bare Steve almost can’t hear it, Tony says, “I can’t remember.”

“Sure you can—”

“No, I _can’t,_ ” Tony spits, eyes flashing dangerously. “I can’t remember what she looks like—”

He cuts himself, choking on the words. Licks his lips and plants a hand in Steve’s chest, gripping enough material of his shirt to firmly push himself away. Steve says his name, once, a gentle warning, and covers Tony’s balled fist with his own hand.

Tony yanks away and doubles over, vomiting.

* * *

**2018**

The room itself, which had previously been made to contain Vision in the case of a stone malfunction, doubled as both living quarters and a medical center. Peter, more often than not, found himself bored. May’s visits are his favorite. They sit cross legged with the glass between them for hours, listening to music, talking, playing Uno. She even brings her laptop to watch Netflix on once. But she has work in the mornings, so she can only stay for a few hours at a time, though she comes as often as she can, often bearing food or goodies to make Peter smile. At the end of the day, though, it’s always Peter alone in the middle of his glass room, staring at his hands.

Things changed for everyone but Peter.

Thanks to Peter’s snap, Bruce is no longer permanently caught between himself and Hulk. He doesn’t really mind it that much. Peter hadn’t known that they had fused at all, so when Tony had explained it to him — that his snap had reverted everything to how _Peter_ remembered it five years ago before he had been lost to Thanos’ snap — he couldn’t help but feel guilt settle in the pit of his stomach. Peter had cornered Bruce the second he came back into the glass room. “I’m sorry I ruined it,” he had said. “I didn’t mean to change you back. I never meant to do that.”

Bruce had stopped, blinking rapidly at Peter’s words, but then smiled at him, ever disarming and gracious. They just patted his shoulder, saying, “Don’t worry, kiddo. You didn’t do anything wrong. The big guy and I are still friends.”

Peter didn’t expect to make such a good friend in Bruce, but Bruce likes to spend time with him, and Bruce can actually come _inside_ the glass, making him the only person Peter can actually have physical contact with. Bruce is clever and patient, enjoys hearing Peter babble about quantum theory and providing their own input in return, and they’re always gentle with the procedures.

The procedures are Peter’s least favorite part.

Scan, analyze, experiment, treat and repeat. Peter loses count after about twenty injections of things he no longer bothers to learn the names of. He remembers the ones that make him sick. Bruce doesn’t make him do those twice. The MRI machine had been frightening at first, but now Peter and Bruce fondly refer to it as the Nap Tube, where Peter promptly passes out with a little stuffed bear tucked under his arm. Other than that, there are ultrasounds, blood tests, active absorption procedures, and other rather docile treatments. Bruce doesn’t want to get more harmful than that. Electrotherapy may do something, but Peter’s eyes go wide when they say that, so they quickly cross it off the list.

The problem is that the impact of the gauntlet is constantly trying to kill him. The radiation Peter harbors in his own body is fighting it off incessantly, which doesn’t leave much extra energy for Peter’s body to heal the deep wounds on his right arm from the actual gauntlet. Thankfully, it didn’t make it past his upper arm, which is less space that needs to be healed, but the battle of his own body leaves him constantly exhausted — falling asleep in different places around the room at random times of the day, with a weak appetite and almost no physical stamina.

When they realize his body isn’t strong enough to win the fight on its own, Bruce immediately insists on a regular injection schedule of absorbent supplements. He explains that the problem isn’t _just_ the constantly festering destruction of the stones’ powers rooted in his body, but his own body’s radiation. It functions like bacteria— some of it is good, keeping him alive and strong. And some of it is bad. The good counters the bad and keeps it from hurting Peter physically under normal circumstances.

But with the damage from the stones, and the colorful masses of energy pulsing through Peter’s body, the “good” radiation has no time to protect him from the bad. And what Peter doesn’t tell Bruce is that he can feel the energies trapped in him— all six of them, pulsing in time with his heartbeat, racing up and down his body from his fingertips to his toes. He never tries to use them. He doesn’t want to know what they can do. He just wants to get better.

With each day he spends trapped in the glass, Peter’s ever hopeful spirit withers. Each sad glance from the passing Avengers, each pained smile from May, each time Bruce has to change his arm’s bandages — it all makes it worse. He doesn’t want pity. He wants to either be alive or dead. _Schrödinger’s_ _Peter,_ he realizes, without much mirth. He’s in the box right now. He doesn’t know whether he’s going to come out of it alive or dead. He has a feeling which one he wants.

And then he finds out about Morgan.

Nothing had come of the search for her. There were no pictures of her anywhere. The team had forgotten her. Even Happy was struggling with her memory. Over dinner every night, Tony and Pepper had a somber ritual. Tony would start with, “Brown hair, brown eyes. Looked nothing like you.”

“Didn’t like pepper on her Kraft,” Pepper would say.

“Lampshade was purple, but she hated it. We had to change it.”

Pepper would pause, twirling her fork, searching her memory. Tony would fear, for an awful moment, that she’s forgotten more, but then Pepper would say, “There was that period where she couldn’t fall asleep without someone holding her hand. Right? Do you remember that?”

“Yeah,” Tony would laugh, but he wouldn’t smile. “Yeah, I remember that.” They would continue like this until they were full, saying as much about her as they could remember. Before he went to sleep, Tony would write down everything new that was said in a book that he kept on his nightstand.

When Tony arrives outside the glass room toting a plastic bag, Peter had stood from the bed and immediately approached the glass. “Present for me?” Peter had joked, grinning hopefully.

“Uh-huh. Happy was pissed about having to go all the way out there for it, so you better enjoy that,” Tony says, pushing the bag through the door and shutting it again. Peter settles cross-legged on the floor to devour the sandwich, and Tony sinks to sitting opposite him, scrolling through his phone. With his mouth full of chips, Peter tilts his head to read the small slip of paper visible through Tony’s clear phone case.

Peter asks, “Who’s Morgan?”

Tony goes stiff. He doesn’t look up from his phone for a moment. When he does, he plasters on a smile and says, “That’s for me to know and you to find out, hm?”

“Oh, come on.” Peter leans back on his hands, smiling coyly. “You gotta tell me. I’m dying of boredom in here. I gotta know.”

“Nah.”

“Mr. _Stark_ ,” Peter pleads, smile turning to a pretend pout. “ _Ple—_ ase? C’mon.”

Tony’s own playful expression fades. He takes a moment to look down at his phone, schooling his expression into something neutral, but there’s a haunted look in his eyes.

“She’s, uh,” Tony says, clears his throat, “she was my daughter.”

The sentence strikes Peter in the gut. His expression wilts. He remains perfectly still, staring at Tony as horror slowly creeps up his face. “Oh.” _Was._ Peter licks his lips.“What,” he pauses, voice going thin, “what happened to her?”

It takes Tony a long time to answer. His thumbs trace the back of his phone, as if trying to calm himself. He’s reminding himself to keep it together for the kid, not to freak him out any more. That’s his job. “When you,” he stops to correct the wording, “when the gauntlet got used again, it put us back in 2018. Reverted everything to the way you remember it before we lost you.” His hands go still in his lap and he sets his phone down. When he looks up at Peter, his voice trembles, but he manages a reassuring smile. “She wasn’t alive then, so she doesn’t exist now. Wrote her name down so I wouldn’t forget it.”

Peter feels like throwing up. At his side, his bandaged arm is starting to tremble. The food is forgotten, the glass between them forgotten. He wants to recoil, can feel tears threatening. This isn’t right. This shouldn’t have been what happened. It was his fault. Of course Tony won’t say it, but the subtext is there. He blurts it out— “I killed your daughter.”

“No— don’t do that, kid.”

“I killed her,” Peter insists, voice pitching up. His hands lift to cover his face. “Oh, god. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”

“No, you didn’t. Hey— hey, _look_ at me.” Peter is curling into himself on the other side of the glass, knees brought up to his chest, and Tony shifts to sit on his knees, setting his phone aside. He raps on the glass with his knuckles, concern now knitting his brows together. “Look at me, Peter.”

Peter sniffles “can’t,” but forces himself not to cry. Not right now. His thoughts spiral out of control, turning into a vicious, all-wrong cycle— Tony deserves to hate him for this. Thinking Tony would hate him for it is self-pity. Crying is self-pity. Not crying shows no remorse. Reacting like this is theatrical. Be a man and apologize to his face without blathering.

That last one strikes home, and Peter forces himself to stop hiding behind his hands and knees, though meeting Tony’s eyes takes a moment longer. Tony, sitting forward on his knees, eyes wide and attentive and kind, has one hand hovering near the door release button, preparing to enter the room if he has to. Peter’s eyes flick over the button and Tony’s hand, and his heart sinks as he realizes how much Tony has given up— and would give up— for him.

He doesn’t deserve it.

“I’m so, so sorry,” Peter whispers, brittle. “I ruined everything, didn’t I?”

Later that evening, Peter overhears Thor talking with Tony about Natasha. Thor wonders if, because Peter’s snap set everything back to 2018, Natasha might be out there somewhere. Tony shuts him down by explaining that the soul stone’s sacrifice was made permanent by the snap.

She’s gone for good.

Peter can feel himself go downhill after that. His thoughts grow dark and vicious, swirling into a feeding frenzy of resentment at himself, anger at himself for that resent, and so on. Every day he’s answering the same questions. How are you? _I’m fine._ Are you okay? _I’m fine._ How can I help you? _I said I’m fine._ How can I make you feel better? _Please stop asking._ I just want to help. Are you sure you’re okay? _I’m okay. I’d tell you if I wasn’t. Promise._

No, he wouldn’t. But he can’t take the pity getting worse. He doesn’t deserve it, and somehow is ashamed to still be so _sad_ after everything they’ve all done for him. He’s lucky to be alive. It should have killed him. It didn’t. He’s here for a reason. They care about him.

He can’t bring himself to accept that he deserves it. Not even a decade of being Spider-Man could cover the damage he’d done in a split second.

At one point, Peter quietly asks, “Am I going to die?”

Bruce stops where they are to stare at him over the top of their clipboard. “No,” they say, shaking their head, brows knitting. “No, Peter. I wouldn’t let that happen.”

Peter nods somberly. He picks his words with care, trying to word it normally. “How long would it take me to die if you— if you stopped... keeping me alive?”

It makes Bruce shift uncomfortably. They know what that kind of talk means, and instead of answering the question, they say, in a firm voice, “You’re not going to die.”

 _I think I might,_ Peter thinks. _And I wish I had._

Instead, he forces a smile. “Okay. I trust you.”

* * *

 

Sometimes the pit of sadness in his chest is so large and heavy that he swears it’s going to show up on the MRI. He dreams about that once. Like a gaping maw, the center of his chest is a pulsing wad of black; Bruce stands from their chair, alarmed, and comes into the MRI room and pulls him out of the tube, but by time he gets to Peter, Bruce’s face is completely blank. No mouth, no nose, his eyes nothing but gaping, burnt sockets filled with piercing light. They shake Peter by the shoulders and shout, “Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you tell us you were dying?”

Paralyzed by fear and Bruce’s scaldingly bright eyes, Peter tries to answer “I did,” but he has no mouth. Nothing comes out. When he looks down, both of his arms are charred and turning to ash, fading away before his eyes. A sharp whistle fades into his hearing, overtaking Bruce’s shouting as numbness crawls up his body. Past Bruce, Peter can see Tony and May standing outside the glass, staring in at him with those same hollow, burned out eyes full of white light. _You killed them,_ they say.

He screams for help.

He wakes up with the force of the yell that rips itself from his throat. His body jerks violently, his lips are chapped, his body is slicked with sweat, the bandages of his arm are tangled and half-undone. Bile burns the back of his throat, and Peter shoves himself out of bed and into the bathroom, slamming the door as he goes. He vomits into the toilet, tries to rip the bandages off his arm, vomits again. Dry sobs rack his body, and Peter trembles so violently he has to shove himself between the toilet and the wall with his knees up to his chest to calm down.

It takes him ten minutes to pull himself to his feet and wash his face and mouth in the sink. When he comes up, still dripping, he pulls his shirt over his head and discards it, then undoes the rest of the bandages tangled on his arms.

Peter stares at himself in the mirror.

The shirt is crumpled into a ball on the floor. The gentle lighting of the bathroom softens the curves of his muscles, makes him seem smaller and less... himself. Peter lets his eyes trail over his face, his neck, his collarbone. His eyes follow the flat plane of his chest, his stomach — he hasn’t eaten, he should eat — and down his arms. His left hand is okay, resting on the counter, fingers just so slightly curled.

His right arm, however, is mangled with delicate pink scars, still angry red in some of deeper spots. They jag up his forearm, splitting off into upwards rivulets that cut deep into his skin in places that still have stitches. Peter, eyes still glued to the mirror, slowly rotates his arm to inspect the rest of it. The scars sprout from Peter’s knuckles and wind all the way up to his bicep; the fresh skin is baby soft. Peter trails his fingers over it, rueful.

They’ll heal. Bruce said it would take while for his system to fully repair the damage. Everything seems to be a miracle to them. It’s a miracle it didn’t extend up higher. It’s a miracle they got him medical care in time. It’s a miracle he’s still alive.

 _No, it’s not,_ he thinks. _It’s bad luck._

He rolls his shoulders back and down, straightening himself with a heavy exhale, a frown. He makes eye contact with himself and holds it. Breaks it to scour his face and torso, examine his flaws, and then meets his own eyes again.

He can’t bring himself to say any of the half-formed thoughts in his mind. Too chaotic, too fast, everything stuck in the back of his throat like acid. He should keep it inside. Saying it could make the dam break, and then they’ll be onto him, they’ll force him to go to a counselor or something equally annoying. Worse, the counselor will have to come to him and sit outside the glass.

 _Look at you,_ he thinks. His mind produces descriptors on shuffle as he stares at himself: weak, ugly, useless, sad, alone, hero, stupid, childish, substandard, not enough, worthless. His mind centers on hero. It doesn’t belong there. _You’re not a hero._ _Why would you ever think you’re a hero? They’re lying to you about it, and you believe them. How sad is that? You want it so bad you believe anything they say._

 _You know Tony’s lying to you,_ his mind says.

_You killed his daughter, and you’re the one crying about it._

Aloud, in a dry, bitter voice, Peter settles on: “Pathetic.”

* * *

The hardest thing about the arm injury is using his phone. Despite his enhanced strength, holding the phone up for long periods of time makes his hands shake, and Ned _loves_ to talk. Peter, of course, loves to talk right back. They text nonstop, even while Ned is at school. Ned gets his first detention ever because of texting Peter in class. MJ is much sneakier about her texting him.

Both of them keep Peter entertained, but his hands shake, making his thumbs miss keys and the phone jitter in his palms. He retypes messages three or four times before he gets them right. _How are you_ becomes _hwo areoyu?_ becomes _how aretou_ becomes _how are y ou_ before it finally gets sent. Peter often has to set his phone down on the edge of the bed or on his chest between texts.

Ned replies infuriatingly fast. Peter doesn’t tell him about the injury and avoids telling him when he’ll be back to school. (Never, probably.) MJ asks to visit. Peter says no. MJ asks to FaceTime. Peter says no, but they can call on the phone, just regular. So they do. Peter’s amazed to see, when they hang up, that they had talked for nearly two hours. It felt like ten minutes. He had been smiling, dazed and happy for the rest of the night. That had been a good day.

Other days are not so good.

The arm makes him clumsy, which he should already be aware of, but it’s hard to get used to. Once he dented the steel countertop with his good elbow. He’s spilled half a dozen drinks. More than once he’s tripped and fallen on his face while trying to get to the bathroom. It’s ridiculous and embarrassing— as Spider-Man, he’s perfectly graceful, with lightning reflexes and agility, and now he’s a fumbling mess again. It puts him in a quiet and upset mood.

Today, Peter sets his phone down on his tray on the side of the bed, eyeing the TV remote across the room. But when he swings his legs off the edge of the bed to stand, his bandaged arm catches the edge of the tray and flips it to the floor, water cup and all. Peter barks out “ _no!_ ” and reaches out to try and catch it, but it’s too late— the phone strikes the floor at a perfect angle and shatters, little bits of glass going here and there. If that didn’t do it, the cup clatters down right by the phone, water splashing over the now-broken and dark screen of his phone.

Peter stares at it for a long moment, one hand over his mouth, and then bursts into tears.

The tears quickly give way to all the emotions that he’d been holding back. He shouldn’t be crying. He really shouldn’t, he’s not even _that_ upset about it, but the hot tears are already rolling down his cheeks and the frustration at his crying just makes him cry more. “Come on,”  Peter mutters, lifting his gauzed hand to his face to cover it. The tears bleed into the gauze and dampen it while Peter hugs his other arm around his waist, muttering: “come on, stop it— get it together.”

He fills his lungs as much as he can with air, willing the tremors in his chest to subside before Tony inevitably comes back to check on him. But the breath just culminates into a quiet sob. Peter tucks one ankle behind the other and hunches over, tensing every muscle in his body as if to lessen the weight pressing in on him from all sides.

 _You’re almost out of high school,_ he reminds himself. _You’re Spider-Man. You can’t cry over this stuff. You’re an Avenger. You have to get used to it._ But the scolding only holds back his tears long enough for them to turn to thick, heavy sobs.

Peter had been right to fear someone walking by, but Tony is out of the tower right now. When Steve had heard the tray clatter to the floor, he had left his room to investigate. He’d kept out of Peter’s sight, only pacing far enough down the hall to peer into the glass room. When he sees Peter slumped over the edge of the mattress, face covered and body trembling, Steve realizes with surprise that he’s crying. He immediately straightens up and takes another step forward, intending to get to him, but stops abruptly.

Tony had strictly warned him not to go in, under _any_ circumstance. Steve lifts a hand and rubs the bandage over his eye, and then touches his wrists, remembering the radiation burns he’d gotten from carrying Peter to the jet. He mutters a curse and turns in the other direction, heading straight for the living room.

“Thor,” Steve calls. “Thor, you home?”

“Yes,” comes the answer from the living room. When Steve rounds the corner, he can see the god  tucked into the corner of the couch, looking up from his magazine. “I was just r—” he says, and Steve cuts him off.

“Need your help, now. I can’t go in the room, and he’s not good.”

Thor is on his feet before Steve can finish, and though Steve waits for Thor to reach him, the taller man brushes past him urgently without stopping. “Is he hurt?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about Bruce,” Thor asks, taking a left turn. “Where’s Bruce?”

“I don’t know, Thor, but the kid’s crying.”

“If he’s injured, I don’t know how much help I’m going to...”

He trails off when Peter comes into view, slowing for a moment to watch. Steve is by his side, brows knitted with concern. On the floor, Peter’s phone is shattered, his tray overturned, and water pooling out from a broken cup that had fallen with the tray. Peter is doubled over on the edge of the bed, trying to make himself as small as possible. His shoulders shake gently with sobs. His back is to them, and he hasn’t noticed either of them.

Thor breathes, “Oh.”

“Tony said you could go in,” Steve says softly.

When the glass door opens and footsteps cross the room urgently, Peter stifles the sound of his crying immediately, shrinking further into himself. Heat rushes to his face with embarrassment, and he quickly wipes at his face, averting his eyes from both the figure approaching and the mess he made on the floor. He wants to apologize to who he assumes is Bruce — for the mess, for crying, for _surviving_ and being such a pain in the ass, it should have killed him. If it had killed him like it should’ve then nobody would be having all this trouble. They’d be sad, yeah, but they would move on. They wouldn’t have to see him like this. It’s stupid. It’s so fucking stupid.

“Sorry,” he chokes out, “‘m sorry—”

Strong arms envelope his shoulders, and Peter freezes in the middle of his apology. Thor nearly engulfs Peter in his arms, careful to avoid his injuries as he tucks the smaller against him as if shielding him from some unseen threat. Thor doesn’t say anything, but Peter slowly wraps his arms around his waist in return, badly holding back his tears with a sniffle and a hiccup.

“It’s alright,” Thor murmurs, taking note of how fast Peter’s heart is thudding through his chest and the strain of his quickened breathing; panic attack, Thor realizes. He vividly recalls how it feels — like thirteen things are tearing you apart, like your body can’t function fast enough to keep up with staying alive. When Thor looks down enough to study the boy in his arms, it’s painful how similar Peter’s weakened posture in the sharp fluorescent lighting resembles the rare moments of vulnerability he had seen in Loki from time to time.

Thor lifts his hand to stroke Peter’s hair. “It’s _okay_ ,” he repeats, imitating the soft tone Frigga used to take all those years ago to calm him. Peter turns his head to bury it in Thor’s shoulder, hoping it’ll muffle the crying. Thor shushes him like he would a child, still brushing his fingers through Peter’s hair comfortingly.

He never was very good at calming Loki down, but their mother was. Thor had watched it more than once— the motherly tone and calm words, the gentle hands smoothing away the tears. And though he didn’t make a point of practicing Frigga’s comforting skills, over the thousands of years of his life, and now with years of experience of dealing with his own trauma, it comes naturally. The urge to calm the small, trembling boy in his arms calls upon a set of instincts he never would have guessed that he had.

“Shouldn’t be this bad,” Peter mumbles into his shoulder, voice high and warbling. Thor can feel Peter’s fingers curl into little fistfuls of his hoodie, can feel his torso spasm with a little sob that pitches his voice. “I should be _better_ . I’m- I’m too old. I’m an _Avenger_ —” Peter cuts off when his voice breaks.

Thor, who had carefully kept himself from interrupting, speaks in a voice so low and soft that it rumbles his chest. “Nobody’s too old to cry. And nobody’s too good to cry, either, you know.” His body sways the slightest back and forth. Peter’s breathing catches, then releases; he takes a shuddering inhale, but the crying definitely softens. Thor’s not sure if it’s the swaying or the talking, so he continues with both, still running his hand through Peter’s hair. “Do you know how old I am?”

“Nuh-uh,” Peter mumbles, shaking his head but not looking up. “You look, like,” a hiccup, “thirty…”

“I’m over three thousand years old,” Thor says. Peter pulls away to stare at him, startled, and Thor gives him a smile and a lift of the brows. “And do you know when the last time I cried was?” Peter remains expectantly silent, and Thor carefully brushes a tear from Peter’s face with his thumb as he says, “Last night.”

Peter’s eyes widen a little as he stares up at Thor. Though his face is flushed and pink with tears, he isn’t crying anymore, and the knot in his throat is undone for the moment.

“Really?” he says, soft and high. “Are you okay?”

A moment of surprised silence. Warmth pools in Thor’s chest, and a smile splits across his face despite himself. Of course Peter would ask if he’s alright just after coming off his own panic attack. “Yes,” he laughs, “yes, I’m fine. I’m going to continue being fine, and so are you. I promise you that.”

Sixteen years is nothing put next to three thousand. Peter _is_ a child to Thor, and yet he’s an Avenger. Not only that — Avengers aside — he wielded the gauntlet and survived it. A boy who reached into the stars and rearranged them by force at the cost of his own life, and Thor was surprised that he isn’t putting himself first? A twinge of sadness pricks Thor’s gut when he realizes that Peter’s life is going to go by much too quickly. Humans are frail and don’t last forever, no matter how pure their hearts are. Thor’s smile fades into something sadder, more hurt, and he gently uses the sleeve of his hoodie to dry the tears wetting Peter’s cheeks.

“My mother,” Thor says, still wiping at Peter’s face, “was a wonderful woman. I loved her very, very much, and I wanted to be just like her. But I never understood what made her so kind, so…” He waves his hand a little, searching for the word. “So strong.”

Peter watches wide-eyed, with his hands in his lap as Thor fusses over him. “She used to tell me that being brave was never about not _having_ moments of weakness, but was about being able to treat them as friends.”

“Friends,” Peter echoes, brows furrowing.

“That’s right, friends.” Thor nods. “See— Bruce taught me this part— our bodies react chemically to our feelings. Panicking is natural. Trying to suppress it or feeling horrible about having such awful, consuming emotions will incite them, like, uh— poking a bear with a stick. And though you may not like those feelings, they’re only going to be worse if you antagonize them by ignoring them.”

“So… I shouldn’t treat them like bullies?” Peter asks, picking his words carefully. “Because that’s what everyone says you’re supposed to do. Ignore them until they get bored and go away.”

“You ignore your bullies?” Thor makes a comical face. “I always defeated mine in battle.”

Peter sputters into a giggle, which Thor returns with a smile so wide it makes his eyes wrinkle at the corners. Peter grins at him and says, “You’re making that up.”

“No, absolutely not,” Thor says, mocking offense. “Once, when I was a boy, I had a friend who thought it was very funny to put worms in my food, so I met him on the palace lawn and fought him.”

“No, you didn’t!”

“On my honor, I _did._ ”

“I don’t believe it,” Peter says, still giggling, while Thor, still smiling, studies him. Peter kicks his legs off the edge of the table a little bit. His bandaged arm rests in his lap, partially undone, and Peter tilts his head at Thor just a little.

“Come here,” he says, pulling Peter in to hug him again. This time, Peter doesn’t hesitate to throw his arms around him, and Thor rubs his back gently. “You’re not just an Avenger, you know. You’re Peter Parker, and he’s allowed to have feelings.”

Peter can feel himself wilt a little in Thor’s arms. His expression saddens, and he pulls away. He doesn’t meet Thor’s eyes. “I think,” Peter breathes, cuts himself off. He has to wait to trust his voice in order to finish the sentence, swallowing hard and gripping the edge of the bed. “I think I killed them.”

He looks up at Thor, expression grave. Thor’s eyes narrow a little with confusion, and he cants his head to the side. “What?” Peter’s gaze drops, and Thor gently prods at him. “Scoot over. Killed who?” Peter obliges, making room. Thor sits beside him, and when Peter begins to swing his legs off the edge of the bed, Thor does the same.

“Morgan,” Peter says hollowly, staring at the floor. “And Natasha. ...I heard you and Tony talking.”

“Ah,” Thor says, following Peter’s line of sight to the floor, looking at the same spot. There’s a beat. Peter pulls his arm into his lap, kneading his thumb into it idly. It hurts. The hurting helps. Thor’s silence makes Peter anxious, makes his heart rate pick up again. As much as he feels like he deserves it, he’s sure that Thor condemning him now will hurt much more than digging his thumb into his arm. Thor inhales to speak, and Peter winces, but all Thor says is, “I miss Natasha very much,” and he pauses, drops his gaze. “Very much, yes.”

Peter stays silent. Thor turns his attention to him, voice softening. “But do you know something?”

When he looks up at him, Thor has a smile, soft and reassuring. “It wasn’t my fault. Neither was it yours, and neither was it Clint’s. You did the right thing, and the right thing often comes at a high price.”

He pauses, rubs at his mouth. This is hard to talk about, and Thor can feel tears welling behind his eyes, but he blinks them away to continue. “See, grief is like a trick, sometimes, trying to make us think that oh, if I had just done this, or if I had just been there, or if it had only been me.” He looks ahead again. Peter’s eyes, now wider and glossy, are still trained on Thor as he speaks. “There are many people I loved dearly that I’m never going to see again, but we can’t have those things. We aren’t capable of getting them back. All we can do is carry on and let those people guide us, knowing that were they here, they would want us to be carrying their hearts with us.”

Thor looks back to Peter, his smile now turned bittersweet, his voice soft and sad. “That is what we do. We carry the hearts of those who no longer can carry their own.”

“Yeah,” Peter murmurs. “Just wish they were still here.”

“I know,” Thor says. “I know. So do I.”

They sit in silence for a moment, and then Thor rests a hand on Peter’s head, ruffling his hair. “Natasha would have loved you,” he says. His voice breaks. “I’m sure of it.”

* * *

 _We aren’t capable of getting them back,_ Thor had said.

That night, with the lights dimmed and the tower all but asleep, Peter paces the glass room. He can feel the power of the stones thrumming in his chest, can feel it practically vibrating down to his fingertips. _We aren’t capable._ He turns the words over and over in his mind, thinking hard on it. _We aren’t capable of getting them back._

_Getting them back._

_We aren’t capable._

His hands ball into fists in response, and he can feel them grow hot. Even if he wanted to lay down and go to sleep, the energy is pounding in his body with such intensity that he can see the radiation monitor on the far wall rising steadily. They’ll have to clear the room in the morning. He needs to calm down, to lay down and forget about it.

But Tony shouldn’t have to be grieving Morgan. Thor shouldn’t have to be grieving Natasha.

_We aren’t capable of getting them back._

They should be here. And Peter might be capable.

He double checks that the door is locked, pushes his bed out of the way, and stands in the middle of the room. Peter holds his hands straight out on either side of him, but that feels weird, so he drops them to his side again. He screws his eyes shut. Again, not right. He opens them and huffs, pacing a few times again.

“Naturally,” he says to himself, retaking his position in the middle of the room. “Just like swinging. Let it come naturally.”

He takes a few deep breaths, shakes his hands and his feet out in turn, rolls his neck, and focuses on a spot past the glass wall that separates him from the outside world.

Slowly, Peter eases his mind into the task. This is dangerous. This might rip him in two. It could burn him all over. He might not come back at all — but _they_ might. Determination hardens his features. _I can do this,_ he thinks. _I used the gauntlet. I can do this. I’m bringing them back._

Peter lets the power inside him flood his body.

Everything goes white and everything is moving. For a moment, Peter feels as if he’s been ripped from the ground and thrown into the atmosphere — everything goes small, and when he lifts his hand to shield his eyes from the blinding light, he can see his bones, can see _himself._ His body feeling like it’s drifting upwards in the wake of this brilliant tide of light and energy, like he’s floating on the surface of something he could enjoy drowning in. His body tingles with the feeling, and Peter actually _laughs._ It feels amazing.

And then, like a wave crashing over him, the power converges on him at once. From six directions, the center of all their energy and knowledge and force slam into him in a concussive nucleus of power. The strength of each stone is equally powerful, making it impossible to move in any direction, keeping his body pinned to the spot and at its mercy. Peter tries to move, but his arms are locked to his side, his breath caught in his throat. He doesn’t budge, even using as much strength as he can muster.

_Oh, god._

Panic settles heavily in his gut. The colors are brilliant and raw and Peter feels, for a moment, that his soul might be ripped from his body with the force of the multicolored winds tearing at his cosmic form. The sound is just as tremendous as the colors, a tempest of a cosmic storm centering on him and stripping him of the feeling he has — starting at his fingertips and working up to his arms, his chest, down through his legs. He’s not going to be able to feel if the stones damage his body. Though Peter quickly reasons with himself that there’s no way they’d be able to — they’re not on him, they’ve been returned, there’s no gauntlet — the fear grips him by the throat. This could kill him. They knew it could kill him, and he did it anyway. They _tried_ to warn him. For the first time since the battle, Peter is scared for his life.

Peter wants to live.

If for no other reason than to die elsewhere, not like this, not consumed by the cosmos, he wants to live. Something peaceful or isolated—- he wistfully considers that the power could probably take him to a timeline that doesn’t know him, that won’t stop him. Something where everything can just… stop. Forever. The stones gravitate towards this fleeting desire, trying to transport him there, but Peter roughly drags his mind back to the white-hot center of the powerstorm before it can be successful. That’s _not_ what he came here for.

He tips his chin back and lets it take him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you got this far i would love a comment!!! skdjfh again i'm so sorry. there’s one more chapter to go this isn’t the end dont worry!


	3. transcend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i'm extending this fic to 1 additional chapter and an epilogue! i have it planned out in my head it's just really hard for me to write lately w/ my mental health so i'm doing my best. this chap is much shorter bc it's practically no dialogue so hsjdf yeah take it . thank yall for reading and i really love all your comments, they make my day!!!

_You had not expected this, the bedroom gone white,  
the astronomical light pummeling you in a stream of fists._

* * *

**20??**

“He thought it was his fault,” Tony says, quiet. 

At his feet, shards of broken and charred glass are scattered in heaps. The explosion hadn’t left any of the glass walls intact; the equipment inside the room is overturned, blackened. The bedframe is unrecognizably mangled. A capsized IV stand leaks fluid, slowly, as if to the beat of a heart. Around them, the outer walls have been blackened, with greying silhouettes. 

The room had been designed to contain this sort of thing, with four inch ballistic glass, triple wired support beams, heat-dampening systems. It was radiation proof, explosion proof; poison, acid, bullet, brute strength, you name it, Tony had it proofed. 

Which makes the expenditure of power that much more terrifying. It was as if the glass was no stronger than a ceramic plate, and all Peter had to do was push it off the counter to watch it shatter into thousands of shards that are now beneath Tony’s feet in little heaps.

He hesitates to move. Each step grinds the shards beneath his feet with a noise that sounds sickeningly more like bones than it does glass. 

Not even the support beams of the glass room had survived it; the four posts of metal had mangled and twisted. In the middle, where the nucleus of the explosion had hit hardest, the posts had broken outwards in incongruent shapes. One of them looks, hauntingly, like an outstretched hand.

This is the second kid he’s lost in two weeks.

At his side, Steve is rubbing a hand over his mouth. Thor has his arms crossed. Neither say anything, so Tony says again, “He thought it was his fault.” 

Bruce is picking their way through the toppled medical equipment, picking things up and turning them over in their hands. 

Steve says, “Do you think he ran away?” 

“He would not have left. He thinks he’s a danger,” Thor says. “He would have come to get one of us.”

“He was scared.” Steve’s tone says something else entirely. His expression is half unreadable with the eyepatch that covers his wound, but the thin line of his lips give enough of his worry away. “Kids do stupid shit when they’re scared.”

“Fear does _not_ necessitate cowardice.” 

“I didn’t say that.” 

“Peter would not have left,” Thor says, sharper. A warning. “Whatever’s happened to him, whatever he’s done, he has good reasoning.” 

Tony ghosts one of his hands along the bent poles, running his thumbs over the splintered fingers of still-warm metal, taking in its crude, hand-like shape. He imagines that the shape mirrors Peter in his last moments, whatever may have happened. 

He imagines Peter in the center of the room, his hands outstretched on either side of him, his face twisted into a scream, the power of the stones consuming him, breaking him as easily as glass, charring his body to dust— 

He cuts that thought off.

Steve says what nobody wants to say out loud. “He might be dead. We have to accept that possibility.” 

“No,” Tony says, not taking his eyes off the metal hand. “No. He’s out there.”  
  


* * *

  
The place between.

A great rift where the universe had once been, laid blank before Peter’s eyes.

As if lifted from the ground, Peter’s feet no longer feel the pressure of the floor beneath him. His arms lift as the tempest of six energies flows through him, like light through a prism. His body responds naturally, giving itself to the current; his mouth slightly agape, his eyes shut from the light, the energy pulsing all the way down to his fingertips. He can feel each stone that’s rooted in him with all their teeth-chattering cosmic power, burning him right down to his bones.

This is the moment of change, Peter realizes. This is the part where he allows the stones to consume Peter Parker and leave nothing in their wake, or he allows himself to become something else entirely; something beyond what Peter Parker could ever be. 

Die, or kill what he knows of himself and become something more.

It is a kind of murder to change so much, isn’t it?

Die, or transcend. 

He chooses now, in this moment, whether it will kill him with the trying, or kill him with the finishing. Peter thinks of the world he knows — with May and Ben and Tony, the Avengers, his friends, the people he brought back because he _knew_ of them and could focus on them in the moment he held the gauntlet.

And then, with one effort, Peter opens his mind to everything else.  


It’s not like the first push, which had taken him all at once in a blaze of white. This comes in intervals, one strand at a time, as if Peter is rebraiding a six-threaded rope. Time, Space, Power, Mind, Reality, Soul, each binding the universe together in its own intricate way, building into a deafening hurricane of power that feels like a thousand pounds of pressure pushing on him from all directions, sometimes striking out at him, wearing him down, pummeling him relentlessly.

And then it stops — _everything_ stops. Time stops. The colors and bright cocoon of energy that had been carrying Peter upwards vanishes in a moment so sudden that his body jerks with the sudden removal of momentum, ears ringing, heart pounding.  Only the empty, vast, blank universe meets his eyes, and Peter realizes that he is _entirely_ alone in a void beyond what the human mind can comprehend; an absent infinity. 

No planets. No solar systems. No galaxies. Nothing. Terrifyingly, overwhelmingly, _nothing._

There, in the center of it all, is Peter, staring into the cold and quiet beginning of time.

Before there was anything, there were the stones, great and terrible, their forms indeterminately flung across the cosmos in smears of color and light that arc beautifully around Peter. Had he been himself, Peter would have been humbled with awe. But now, suspended in the middle of Time, the Peter who is more than himself stares infinitely into the expanse with eyes that reflect only the black of space. 

Time brought the stones into being— bound them together into things no larger than a fist, to be used to save worlds, to demolish galaxies— to give life and take it away. The stones sit untouched, for a time, but life begets life, and the universe springs into being before Peter’s eyes. Like watching flowers grow and die in fast motion, Time reveals itself to him— the beginning of the universe, the creation of the planets and the life therein, the existence of every being and creature and soul, _everything_ that has ever happened and will ever happen.

Yes, even the end.

When Time has run its course — a billion years in less than a single beat of Peter’s heart — the next stone takes the stage. 

Like a clock ticking, pieces of the physical universe make themselves visible to Peter from the outside in. The vast, immeasurable expanse of Space, working inwards, beginning with the empty blackness of the universe and building itself into the megacosm. Dot it with superclusters, gas giants, nebulas, galaxies; now go in further. Thousands of inhabited planets teem with life that Peter can _feel_ more than he can see. 

And he can hear them— billions of voices in billions of languages, muted by the bubble of their worlds; shouts turned to whispers that pass through their atmospheres and into the immense silence of the cosmos. A symphony of life, so full and resonantly heard against the harsh contrast of Space that it fills Peter’s body with warmth and assurance. 

At the center of it all, Earth. Not the center of the universe, by any means, but the center of Peter’s attention. It’s suspended to his right, a long way off, its blues and marbled greens spinning slow among its neighboring planets. Some part of Peter processes it as his home. The rest of him believes that the cosmos is the only thing big enough to be his home anymore.

Power. It’s a completely different feeling; where Time had given Peter knowledge and Space had given Peter sight, Power gives him hunger. Peter had already seen, with Time, the planets that had been consumed or destroyed over the course of the galaxy, but Power lets him _feel_ it— the white-hot fire that races across a planet’s surface, devouring its life from the outside in, leaving nothing but a charred rock in place of what had once been a center of teeming life. 

Peter balls his fists and shuts his eyes, briefly, giving a shuddering gasp as its strength rolls through him. With three stones fully empowering him, Peter’s body has become a source of light in and of itself; he glows with a host of colors that blink and flash beneath the surface of his skin, as if a galaxy courses through his body. 

Mind and Reality are next, at once, hand in hand. All the knowledge of what is and all the knowledge of what could be, working in flawless conjunction, a tangle of reds and yellows in the multiverse — which Peter can see, now, and has _been_ seeing. Thousands of duplicate planets existing overtop of each other, expanding and contracting into nothing, every version of every timeline, all at once and not at all. 

It’s a vacant concept, laid bare and simple before Peter’s eyes: infinity. The entirety of the universe, since the dawn of time and stretching to the end of it, with every version of itself and every ounce of knowledge known to every living being, and all the strength to destroy it. 

The only thing left is Soul.

This one starts from the inside, unlike the others. Peter feels it grow from within, taking up the space where his Soul would be if he were still on Earth— 

Would be.

Vacant alarm passes over him. The spot had been empty. It feels strange; something he had never known was there at all, suddenly missing, replaced with the golden presence of something that isn’t quite his as much as it is everybody else’s. The thing that every Soul is and has ever been made from is sitting in the middle of his ribs, simmering and hissing with warmth. His own soul is in there, somewhere. 

Peter faintly realizes that he must have killed himself to get here.  


He stays like this for a little while, hovering in the middle of the world — _his_ world — letting himself take it all in, boundless. He feels himself in every planet, in every person, in every grave and every flower that blooms up around their headstones. He feels himself in the core of the Earth, of Xandar, of Titan; he feels himself in the heat of suns so far from the livable galaxies that they’ve never even been named; he feels himself in the frigid waste of collapsed galaxies and supernovas. 

He is the universe; where Peter Parker had been, there is only infinity. 

With all of time and space circulating around him in harmony, it takes a while for Peter to remember why he came here in the first place; his sense of urgency is lost. A conductor of universe knows that all planets spin at the same speed — which is whatever he chooses it to be.

Peter turns his eyes to Vormir.  
  


* * *

  
Vormir itself is unchanging. Peter knows this without having to look through Time to see it. An entire planet dedicated to the protection of the Soul stone, Vormir has no form of life, no sentient beings besides the soul who is cursed to protect the stone for eternity. Despite the imposing stature of the twin peaks, climbing the mountain itself is no challenge to any who seek to take the stone — the real challenge is at the cliff.

“Seeker,” is all the Skull says, when Peter appears in the shadows of the mountain. Its form lowers in a sort of bow; out of deference or in an attempt to allow conversation, Peter isn’t sure. 

“I came here for a trade,” Peter says. 

“A trade.” The Skull straightens, contemplates this. “Of what sort? I have no stone.”

“I have more than a stone,” Peter says in a voice that isn’t quite his own. He steps out of the shadow. 

The Skull lifts its eyes to him, and shock ripples across its face.

In the fading blue-purple light, Peter stands with his back straight and his chin held high. His skin glows, as if touched by the sun, despite the clouds that obstruct the sliver of moon hanging in the sky. What veins are visible beneath his bright skin are blue, red, purple— the stones, their power vested in him, coursing through his body and making him look unearthly, a star in his own right.

And his eyes. The Skull can’t tear its gaze away from Peter’s eyes, no pupils, nothing to focus on, a blaze so vibrant and intimately familiar to the Skull that it would recognize it anywhere — the same yellow-gold as the Soul stone itself.

A tremor sets itself in the Skull’s chest. It stares at Peter as if struck. 

“ _Transcendent_ ,” it says, and prostrates itself at Peter’s feet. 

Peter gazes down at it, as if the movement had expected — no, _required._

“I don’t want the stone,” Peter says. “I want a soul.”

No answer. The Skull doesn’t dare to meet his eyes.

“Look at me.” 

The Skull draws itself up, partially, its eyes still downcast. Not even Thanos had had _all_ of the stones when he had spilled his daughter’s blood here. Nobody has, until now. The obedience practically performs itself. It had drawn the Skull to its knees on instinct, and it makes it difficult now to finally turn his gaze back up to Peter— to a transcendent, in the shape of a boy no older than sixteen, standing with his feet planted and his fists curled, golden power luminous under his skin and visibly coursing through his body. 

“Yes, sovereign,” the Skull says. 

“All of the souls that were taken on behalf of this planet’s stone will be restored and returned to safety.”

The order hangs in the air for a long moment, breached only by the sound of the wind whipping between Vormir’s peaks. The Skull’s voice shakes. “That— that hasn’t been done before.”

“It will be done now. Unless,” Peter’s brows arch, “you object.” 

“No,” it says, hastily making obeisance again. “As you will it, creator. Anything is as you will it.”

_Anything,_ Peter contemplates, and turns his eyes back to the stars. There are more souls lost than just Natasha’s — more collateral damage that his earthly form had caused. And before that, Thanos had caused even more death; soldiers lost in battle, civilians injured during the worldwide chaos of the snap, children who vanished after Peter snapped everything back to 2018. 

He has work to do. 

When the Skull looks up, Peter is gone, and all his transcendent light with him.  
  


* * *

  
Tony doesn’t answer his phone when it rings the first time.

His hands are busy with the broom, sweeping the glass into piles. Steve and Thor are across the room, manhandling the mutilated medical equipment into piles to be removed and thrown out. Steve glances up at Tony, offers to get the phone for him, but Tony doesn’t answer him. The phone sounds pathetic in the hollowness of the foyer, its ring echoing tinnily until it gets to voicemail and goes silent. 

There’s a few seconds pause, broken only by the sound of glass and metal scraping against the floor, and the phone rings again. Tony only gives it about ten seconds to ring before he crosses the room and grabs the phone up. 

_NO CALLER ID._ His thumb hovers over the answer code for a moment. 

When Tony finally puts the phone to his ear, Thor stops dragging the bedframe. The room falls silent as they wait for Tony to finish his call— they assume it’s Pepper. Tony pales.

Thor’s heart stops when Tony breathes out a single word.

“Natasha?” 


End file.
